


The Joy of Lies

by Macdragon



Category: Connect the Stars - Marisa de los Santos & David Teague
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 02:51:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8872843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macdragon/pseuds/Macdragon
Summary: On growing up, summer camps, hearing lies, and telling the truth.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [myrifique](https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrifique/gifts).



> Thank you for requesting this book! I loved returning to the story and imagining what happens to Audrey and Aaron when they're older. Happy Yuletide!

Audrey Alcott

Frederick Douglass High School

Greenwood, Delaware

 

I was seventeen and if I could write a book on lying, it would be a cookbook. The Joy of Lies by Audrey Alcott. A sugary cake with sticky rosewater icing for the girls covering their flaws with makeup, trying to impress the boys. A fiery chili pepper covered in dark chocolate for the boys trying to ensnare the girls right back. A cup of bitter black coffee for the teenagers that walk down the halls like they own the world, holding their fear close like a hot mug on a cold day. A glass of sweet cherry wine for the feeling I get driving down I-95, pretending I'm free when my troubles still lie in wait at home.

I thought I was an expert when I was thirteen, and after that summer in the Viaje a la Confianza, I even thought I could control it. I didn't know that the lies would grow stronger every year, until they clogged the streets and hallways like smog. I thought I was going crazy until I wrote Aaron and found out that his "talent" was growing stronger too. Aren't we lucky? He wrote me a long letter back about a textbook he had read about puberty and mental changes, things that would have made me blush if it was anyone else.

I was blushing now, sitting in Janie's bedroom on a Friday night. I had a final exam I needed to study for but I thought I would be fine if I put it off until Sunday. It was easy enough to lie to myself. Janie had stolen a bottle of wine from her mother's liquor cabinet and we were passing it around. "I'm so drunk!" Janie shrieked, giggling, the lie sending prickles down my spine. Shared between the four of us, it wasn't too much alcohol. I took another sip to quell the taste of bright, sour lemons, intense enough to make me throw up if I wasn't careful.

"Audrey! You're not supposed to drink until I ask the next question," Janie scolded me.

"Sorry." I put the bottle down and looked at her expectantly. I hated this game.

Audrey put a finger on her chin, pretending to think deeply. "Hmm…" She smiled slyly. "Never have I ever kissed someone on the first date."

The bottle went around, and two girls drank. One of them was lying. It came to me and I shook my head, passing it back to Janie. The question was innocent enough by the game's standards, but I had never kissed someone on a date. I had never kissed anyone. I had never been on a date.

"You should let her keep drinking," Janie's friend Melissa scoffed. "Audrey always wins the game. She hasn't done anything dirty."

I shrugged. It was true enough. "I've never had a boyfriend. It's no big deal, we're still young."

"Mike has a crush on you, and Tom asked you out last year. You always turn everyone down," Janie pointed out.

"I'm just focused on other things," I said, shaking my head. "The hiking club takes up a lot of time, and now I'm trying to get into college."

"Sure." Janie rolled her eyes.

"Are you a lesbian or something?" Melissa asked. She quickly added, "It's cool if you are. Just asking."

"Yeah, it's cool," her friend Shara said softly. She was lying; hatred and fear like burnt toast hung in the air.

"No," I said, and it was true, but I was lying by omission. There was a reason I turned all those boys down. There was someone else I was waiting for.

 

* * *

Louis picked our camp the second year. We went to Hawaii. It was night and day from el Viaje, all blue water and blue sky. We swam during the day and slept on the beach at night. Louis said the sand was the softest bed he'd ever had.

* * *

 

I had a dream that everyone stopped lying. Everything in my head went quiet. It was good for a while until I realized that the world had lost its taste. Voices were like ash in my mouth. I stood in the middle of the hallway, classmates streaming around me. The bumped against me, like I was invisible. I tried to move, but I was frozen. Then I heard wingbeats. Suddenly, my classmates were bats, swirling around me like a cyclone.

"Audrey!" I would recognize Aaron's voice anywhere, even after months apart. He stepped through the leathery maelstrom and stood in front of me. "I love you."

I couldn't tell if he was lying.

He kissed me and the swarm went quiet and I could taste again. Aaron's kiss tasted like oranges.

I woke up with my heart pounding, the sheets tangled at my feet. The fan had died in the middle of the night and the room was stifling. I grabbed my phone and let the glowing screen tether me to reality. Pulling up twitter, I started scrolling through the endless content. I could guess that a large percentage of social media was lies, but I didn't _know_. I couldn't sense it in words, only voices.

_Though dragonflies possess 6 legs like any other insect, they cannot walk._

That was one of Aaron's tweets. He used his account to share random facts he had read, and he had gained a bit of a following. I wondered if he remembered every tweet he'd ever read, too. His abilities had gotten stronger like mine, but there was so much more to read online, too. Once I asked him how he kept it all straight in his head. He said he didn't know, and he hadn't found a book that explained it yet.

 

* * *

Kate took us to an art camp in the heart of the Adirondacks. When I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still smell the pine. The whole summer was hikes in the rain and Kate's favorite earl gray tea and birdsong from the treetops. None of knew how to paint, and at first it was almost as scary as learning how to survive in the desert. But just like the desert, we got used to the colors and canvas. By the end of the summer, we each had a complete painting. Looking at them, I thought I felt a tiny slice of what it was like to understand another person like Kate did.

* * *

 

I was sitting in study hall, going through flash cards for my Spanish exam, when I got a text from Aaron. I held it under my desk where the teacher couldn't see and read the text. "Got in!" I held my breath and tried to look calm as I clicked on the attached image. It was a picture of Aaron holding his early acceptance letter to Harvard.

I typed in my reply. _What about ASU? :)_

I felt guilty immediately. I sent a second text. _Congrats, Aaron, I'm really happy for you._

Lies.

There was no way I could get into Harvard. My grades were okay, and the summer camps and volunteering helped, but state schools were the best I could do. Aaron, Kate, Louis and I had joked about all applying to Arizona State and going to college together. We should have known that Aaron would get into an Ivy League. Maybe Kate and Louis would still apply, but even as I thought it, I knew it wasn't good enough. I loved Kate and Louis, but Aaron Archer had always been the one I missed most of all.

* * *

 

Aaron felt that we had already mastered wilderness survival. That left one other option-- _space_ survival. We all went to Washington DC for NASA's summer camp. When we weren't learning how to float in antigravity or eating dehydrated space ice cream, we wandered around the landmarks and museums. It was like having our personal tour guide, since Aaron knew so much about the city already. He tried not to prepare too much for summer camp, but it was hard to avoid the nation's capital in school. But the best part of the trip was the Library of Congress. We stepped into the reading room and looked down on the rows and rows of people studying. Aaron told us that the books weren't displayed, they were under our feet, and in the walls in hidden stacks, miles and miles of books. "There's always going to be a book I haven't read, something I don't know," he said, and he smiled right at me. I think that might have been the moment when I realized I was in love with Aaron Archer.

* * *

 

We spent all year saving up for our last high school summer camp. It was my idea to go overseas to Iceland. Four weeks hiking through volcanos and glaciers and watching for the northern lights.

I passed all of my finals and junior year was done, just like that. I spent the next few weeks preparing, packing, and researching, even though I knew the latter was pointless with Aaron on our team. It was all a distraction, but I couldn't stop thinking about him.

It was one of the hottest summers in recent memory and I longed for the cool air in Iceland. I had been growing my hair long but I couldn't stand it sticking to my neck and hanging on me in the heat any more, so I went to have it cut. The hairdresser held up my ponytail to show me after she chopped it off, and when I walked out of the salon a stranger on the street told me they liked my haircut and they weren't lying. I ran my hand through my new pixie cut, feeling like my head might float right off my shoulders.

When I got home, I wrote a letter to Aaron. He had told me once that he liked my letters better than phone calls because then he could always remember what I said. I liked letters too, because words on paper don't ring with lies. This letter told the truth about my feelings for him, and I put it in the mailbox just in time. Aaron would get it a day or two before flying out. There was no turning back now.

The plane landed in Iceland at eleven at night. I stood by the window in the sunlight while I waited for the rest of the group, knowing that the sun wouldn't go down for another few hours. Maybe that was why so much energy was coursing through my veins. Or maybe it was the thought of seeing Aaron. He hadn't replied to my letter. The only communication he'd sent before I boarded the flight was a text to all of us-- _Remember to pack hat, water, sunscreen, socks_.

"Audrey!" I heard my name and turned around to see Aaron loping towards me, his giant travel backpack on his back. I had never been this nervous about seeing him. "Did you know that oxygen atoms emit green light, and nitrogen emits red? That's what causes the northern lights.

"Hi, Aaron," I said. His mouth opened like he was going to give me more facts, but then he paused, taking a deep breath.

"I like your hair." He reached out and pinched a tendril of hair between his fingers. Our eyes met, and I thought his were as dazzling as the northern lights. I didn't care if it was corny, it was true. "I got your letter."

I leaned in and our lips met.

How do you describe a kiss? It's not something you can say out loud. It's not something you can write down. It's not something you can hear the lies in, and it's not something you can memorize.

It was…perfect.

"Are you guys KISSING!?"

Kate was yelling and bounding across the terminal with Louis striding behind her. Aaron and I broke away. We were going to have to explain this to Kate and Louis. I wasn't sure if I could explain it to myself yet, but that was okay. Suddenly, I wasn't so worried about the future. We were all together again. It was the last summer, but that just meant we would have the whole rest of our lives ahead of us. We would keep finding each other, the last four years had proven that. Now we had freedom.

Just imagine what could happen.


End file.
